Well, not missing as in "I really, really miss not reading these", more along the lines of missing out on knowing about what's going on. I've talked about this before but it's been brought into sharp focus by a few things I've been reading over the last couple of days. There was the Newsarama Blog piece on Marvel legacy heroes and the CBR 100 greatest comics of 2008 series (starts here).
I read both of them with mounting amazement over the number of things I've not picked up on. Whether it's who happens to be Captain America, the way that X-Force is now a completely covert killing squad run by Cyclops or Doc Strange being replaced next year after he uses dark magic.
When I used to work in Nostalgia & Comics I wouldn't read the comics, but I used to keep up to date with all that was going on in the world of comics with chats to staff and customers and just quickly flicking through the latest X book or Bat thing or even perusing Previews. But now, even with the entire Interwebby thing at my disposal I've got almost no clue what's going on. New Batman? Female Black Panther? Imagine my surprise.
Of course the CBR best of 2008 list does throw open the doors of incredulous debate. Any sort of best of list always does. For example, although I didn't actually get around to reading Jason Lutes' Berlin: City Of Smoke this year I really have problems imagining that there are 89 better comics published last year. And I have a real problem with imagining that Nova is a whole 17 places better than Berlin or that the hideous mess of All-Star Batman & Robin could be at #54. (Play along, pick your own ridiculous examples).
Of course, the problem isn't that the information about these stories isn't available, a quick check on a couple of blogs and wikipedia proved that all the info from recent Marvel and DC series is there for my perusal, it's that I really don't have the time or the immediate access to do the research. Picking it up casually in the shop was easy. Making time to find out about all the details in the latest Marvel, DC and other comics is far harder.
No comments:
Post a Comment